Research

Dr. Castro's research focuses on the ships of the 16 th century Iberian Peninsula , which were among the most expensive and complex artifacts produced in their time. His current projects concern the reconstruction of an India Route nau , a large three-masted ship designed to sail from Lisbon to the Indian subcontinent and back, in a round trip that lasted well over one year.

As director of the ShipLab Dr. Castro is currently working with multi-disciplinary teams and looking at the Iberian ships of the 16 th century from several different points of view. India Route naus are analyzed as sailing machines, as habitats of relatively large and completely isolated communities, floating in an hostile environment, and as products of an evolution process that happened in the nexus between the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic worlds. They are being studied as wooden structures, built with scarce timber resources but engineered to endure important and continued stresses. But they are also looked upon as war machines and symbols of power, and as artifacts that were produced during a particularly interesting socioeconomic process in which the European concept of the World changed rapid and drastically.

Links:
In ShipLab (above): http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/
In Link: http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/index-projects.htm